03/17/2011

Rights Group Faults U.S. on Detained Immigrants

Immigration enforcement in the United States is plagued by unjust treatment of detainees, including inadequate access to lawyers and insufficient medical care, and by the excessive use of prison-style detention, an international human rights group said Thursday.

The group, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, issued those findings in a report that also criticized a federal program that allows county and state law enforcement officials to enforce federal immigration laws. The report said the government had failed to ensure that local police were not singling out people by race or detaining illegal immigrants on the pretext of investigating crimes.